{"id":471,"date":"2025-03-23T12:08:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-23T12:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/03\/23\/michigan-out-rebounds-texas-am-in-ncaa-tournament-win\/"},"modified":"2025-03-23T12:08:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-23T12:08:38","slug":"michigan-out-rebounds-texas-am-in-ncaa-tournament-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/03\/23\/michigan-out-rebounds-texas-am-in-ncaa-tournament-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan out-rebounds Texas A&#038;M in NCAA Tournament win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>DENVER \u2014 The scouting report on No. 4 seed Texas A&amp;M was fairly simple: The Aggies were going to crash the offensive glass \u2014 hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Texas A&amp;M is the best offensive rebounding team in the nation, grabbing 16 per game, and the No. 5 seed Michigan men\u2019s basketball team \u2014 which struggled on the defensive glass at times \u2014 looked like it might be in for a long afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>In one of the Wolverines final games of the regular season, March 2 against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/second-half-wave-and-second-chance-points-sink-no-15-michigan-93-73-losing-to-illinois\/\">Illinois<\/a>, Michigan allowed 19 offensive rebounds and a whopping 30 second-chance points en route to a 93-73 loss. To avoid a similar fate, the Wolverines emphasized rebounding down, starting with the guards.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m disappointed in myself and the staff that we haven\u2019t emphasized our guards rebounding enough, \u201d Michigan coach Dusty May said Friday. \u201c\u2026 It alleviates some pressure from your bigs of having to fight a guy that\u2019s 250 and athletic and get the ball. So we put a really strong emphasis the last couple weeks, and that\u2019s the reason we made incremental progress.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Not only does having guards crash the defensive glass take some of the onus off of the bigs to get every single rebound, it also eliminates the need for an outlet pass. When a guard grabs the rebound, they can immediately lead the break, allowing the Wolverines to establish the high tempo that they thrive in.<\/p>\n<p>While matching up against the best offensive rebounding team in the country could\u2019ve been intimidating, Michigan took it as a challenge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was the number one thing on our docket,\u201d graduate guard Nimari Burnett said about the Aggies\u2019 proficiency on the offensive boards. \u201cAnd we took that personally, we took that with pride. And each and everybody boxed out, gang-rebounded the whole entire game, and that\u2019s what led us to beat the number one team on defensive rebounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the final buzzer sounded, the Wolverines won the overall rebounding battle, 48-39, and the offensive board battle, 16-15. It truly was a team effort, too. While Michigan\u2019s 7-footers led the way \u2014 as junior forward Danny Wolf and graduate center Vlad Goldin collected nine and 12 boards, respectively \u2014 the guards carried their weight as well.<\/p>\n<p>Junior guard Tre Donaldson nabbed six boards, while graduate guard Rubin Jones grabbed seven, including several massive ones in the late minutes. A lot of rebounding in basketball comes down to effort. The fundamentals can only take you so far, at some point, it\u2019s about getting the ball in your hands at all costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just how bad do you really want it?\u201d Donaldson said. \u201cI mean, everybody talks about how bad they want to win, how bad they want to win the national championship, but when it comes down to the details, like keeping the number one offensive rebounding team off glass, it shows how bad you want it if you can do it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Beyond simply keeping the Aggies\u2019 second-chance opportunities to a minimum, the guards helping down ignited the offense as well. Off of misses when a guard collected the rebound, the Wolverines immediately pushed the other way, catching the Texas A&amp;M defense flat-footed several times. In total, Michigan tallied 17 fastbreak points and several others as a result of forcing the defense to react and scramble in transition.<\/p>\n<p>The Wolverines, despite their size, haven\u2019t been a prolific rebounding team all season \u2014 and sometimes they\u2019ve even been burned by it. But when the lights were brightest, Michigan showed it could go all-hands-on-deck and battle down low with the best, literally.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DENVER \u2014 The scouting report on No. 4 seed Texas A&amp;M was fairly simple: The Aggies were going to crash the offensive glass \u2014 hard.\u00a0 Texas A&amp;M is the best offensive rebounding team in the nation, grabbing 16 per game, and the No. 5 seed Michigan men\u2019s basketball team \u2014 which struggled on the defensive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[222,420,419,393,421,248],"class_list":{"0":"post-471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-michigan","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-outrebounds","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tournament","13":"tag-win"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}